A+E Interactive » F1 racinghttp://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei
Bay Area Arts and Entertainment BlogMon, 30 Mar 2015 12:40:46 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1F1 2011 has all the bells and whistles gearheads should expect (review)http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2011/09/26/f1-2011-video-game-review/
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2011/09/26/f1-2011-video-game-review/#commentsMon, 26 Sep 2011 19:08:18 +0000Gieson Cachohttp://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/?p=22961
By Patrick Cant Race game reviewer Eau Rouge is considered by many F1 drivers to have the best corner in motor racing. This turn, on the legendary Spa-Francorchamps track in Belgium, is brilliant. It’s a swooping, sweeping, downhill-to-uphill left-to-right hander.… Continue Reading →]]>By Patrick Cant
Race game reviewer
Eau Rouge is considered by many F1 drivers to have the best corner in motor racing. This turn, on the legendary Spa-Francorchamps track in Belgium, is brilliant. It’s a swooping, sweeping, downhill-to-uphill left-to-right hander. If you’re on your game, you can blast through at 160 mph and up the hill to Les Combes before you begin the plunging, twisting downhill section of the course. And if not, you’re into the guardrail and pinwheeling across the landscape.
As such, it has to be right in the game. And Codemasters, I am happy to report, has nailed it in F1 2011 along with the rest of the courses, including the new track in India. It’s finely detailed and I can’t wait to watch the real race there later this season.
So this is the new F1 2011 game. It has 19 tracks, all the teams, all the drivers, all the bells and whistles. It has online play for up to 16 drivers (with eight more AI cars), plus (as a nice touch) a good split-screen two-player mode.
ACCURATE BEYOND BELIEF: Beyond all that, the gameplay has to be good. When I was getting ready for my first race, I noticed some glitches in the prerace animation, which is always a worry. Once you start, however, it runs beautifully. The feel of the cars is fantastic, the animations are spot on (love the little flexing in the front suspension when you hit a kerb, for example) and the audio is great -- there’s lots of snarling wasps around you that change engine note and tone depending on your relation to them.
This game is quite hard, especially once you start to remove the driver’s aids. But that’s all part of the learning curve. It’s F1, so you can’t drift into corners or plow into other cars. If you try to drift, you’re off the course. If you try to smash your way through traffic, you’ll destroy your car. And if you survive, you’ll be assessed a time penalty, which pretty much dumps you down the standings.
REALISTIC DRIVING: So it’s accurately hard. But you’re not buying this game hoping it will be Burnout F1. You need to spend time with the game to master the nuances of F1. In the way that Gran Turismo is a stickler for proper driving, this is more so.
You must brake before the corner and accelerate out of it. You must draft in order to survive, especially on the faster tracks like Monza. But the reward is exhilarating. The feeling of speed is visceral. And when you get good enough to weave your way through traffic, or make a good pass on a tricky corner, it’s rewarding.
NEEDS THE REAL NURBURGRING: The long race weekend, at least at first, is definitely a good thing. Practice, then qualifying, then a race. That gives you time to nail your breaking zones, figure out the track and tinker with your car setup. Then when it’s you and 23 other cars on the track, you have a sense of what you’re doing instead of driving blind.
"So what's wrong with it?" you may ask. Well, I’m deducting points because Codemasters got me all excited by saying the game includes the “iconic Nurburgring!” as the marketing materials claim.
Well, it does, but not the monsterous legendary Nordschleife, the Hell of the North.
The Nurburgring F1 course, built in 1984, is a fine track, nothing wrong with it at all. But the older, much longer track, built in the 1920s, is the motherlode for racing fans. A number of recent racing
games have included it, and at 12 miles, it’s amazing (a lap takes 9 minutes in a very fast car). They no longer race F1 cars on the track (It’s too dangerous.), but I must admit I was excited at the thought of
at least being able to do it in an F1 game. No such luck.
But that is honestly not a huge flaw with the game. It's still great. I just felt like it was a bit of bait and switch.